Container traffic slated to grow in Halifax

CMA CGM Tage, the biggest container vessel to ever call on the Port of Halifax, may be part of new trend where larger ships arrive in harbour.

Bigger than any other container ship to ever call here, the CMA CGM Tage docked at the Port of Halifax earlier this month.

In the shipping industry, container cargo vessels are measured in terms of the number of formerly-standard, 20-foot containers called TEUs, that they can carry. The Tage can hold 9,365 TEUs, or about seven per cent more than the next-biggest container ship to call on the Port of Halifax.

But that’s still nothing compared to the behemoths the Port of Halifax can berth.

The entrance of the Ultra class

The Ultra class of vessels starts at 10,000 TEUs, making the smallest of them almost another seven per cent bigger than the Tage, the biggest ship so far.

And the Port of Halifax can already handle Ultra-class vessels as big as 16,000 TEUs, or 71 per cent larger than the Tage, at the Halterm Container Terminal.

That’s ginormous.

But what the Port of Halifax can’t do easily is handle more than one of these massive Ultra-class vessels at the same time.

And there’s a move afoot to change that.

“Looking ahead as vessels get bigger we want to be able to ensure Halifax can accommodate two of these Ultra vessels simultaneously,” said Lane Farguson, a spokesman for the Halifax Port Authority, in an interview Monday.

“The industry has been moving to larger vessels for scale for years and we’re starting to see those vessels call on the Atlantic side of North America. It’s more cost-effective for them,” he said.

Talk before action

With that desire to grow its capacity for container traffic, the Halifax Port Authority is planning to launch a public engagement process, first with its stakeholders like the shipping lines, terminal operators, railway, unions and so forth, and then with the general public.

“We eventually want to hear from a broad range of people,” said Farguson.

Although the dates and venues still need to be finalized, the port authority spokesman said the public engagement process is to start before the end of the year.

Accomodation an ongoing process

It was only a few years ago that the Port of Halifax was limited to vessels in the 4,000 TEU range. But then, the industry morphed. The Suez Canal was widened and the Panama extended.

Port officials in Halifax saw all this coming and undertook an aggressive expansion program. In 2015, the local port deepened and widened its piers to be able to accommodate the new vessels.

With that extra capacity, the Port of Halifax’s container traffic spiked. By the end of the second quarter of this year, the local port’s year-over-year growth in container traffic was higher than any other port on in North America, at 19.4 per cent compared to the same period in 2015.

Since then, that rate of growth has slowed. Due to bad weather in the first quarter of last year which made it difficult to handle containers, the year-to-year growth for the first quarter of this year was unusually high.

“(The weather in the winter of 2015) had a real impact on how they were able to move things,” said Farguson.

In the third quarter of this year, container traffic at the Port of Halifax grew by a more realistic 9.9 per cent compared to the previous quarter, bringing the year-to-date rate of growth to 16.1 per cent. In the first nine months of this year, the port handled 354,544 TEUs.

Monday, the Halifax Port Authority spokesman would not divulge details of any forecasts the port might have for container traffic, saying only the port has the potential to triple the amount of container traffic it handles.

“We’re going to continue doing what we’re doing and try to keep that trend going,” he said.

During the last quarter, the port handled less bulk cargo than in the same period last year but is still up 19.4 per cent for the year to date compared to 2015. When all cargo is included, the tonnage handled by the port is up 11.1 per cent for the latest quarter over the second quarter of the year and up 19.7 per cent for the year to date with almost 3.3 million metric tonnes.